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Editorial

Continuing problems underline poor planning for health system

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If Americans are beginning to believe that their federal government can’t handle even the most
mundane responsibility — a Gallup poll released Wednesday showed that 33 percent think government
dysfunction is the top U.S. problem right now — then the continuing fiasco of healthcare.gov does
nothing to change that perception.

Millions of people logged onto the website on Oct. 1, expecting to get a price quote for health
insurance under the federal Affordable Care Act, only to reach an error message before they could
create a profile to even glance at the plans for which they are eligible.

Others faced long delays in loading or weren’t able to verify their identity with the site to
continue. About 81,000 people called the help line that first day, with hold times up to a half
hour. Despite frantic efforts by the government, the problems have persisted.

The Obama administration has had 31/2 years to get this up and working. The government that once
launched men to the moon now can’t launch a website. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen
Sebelius has proved herself better at issuing rosy press releases lauding the launch of the
health-care exchanges than at ensuring that they work.

One might wonder why officials didn’t delay the launch if there was any indication that users
would have trouble. After all, the president unilaterally waives, suspends and delays parts of the
law whenever the mood strikes him. This was the case with the employer mandate, pushed back for a
year. Did the president do so because he knew federal bureaucrats were incapable of implementing
this part of the law? If officials were trying to avoid yet another black eye by going ahead with
the website launch, glitches and all, that was a miscalculation.

Any suggestion that the initial web traffic couldn’t be anticipated doesn’t wash. There are ways
to test such things, first of all. And second, the administration has estimated that about half of
the country’s 50 million uninsured people are going to seek insurance through the exchanges, so the
heavy traffic came as a surprise?

Software engineer David Auerbach, writing a column on Tuesday for Slate.com, pointed out that
the government contracted with two different developers for healthcare.gov: Development Seed for
the front-end, meaning the actual web pages that users interact with. The back-end work, meaning
the behind-the-scenes functional components of the site, was outsourced to Montreal-based CGI
Federal. From navigating healthcare.gov, Auerbach said it’s clear that the two companies worked in
isolation on their code and prayed that the two parts would mesh OK.

Exacerbating public cynicism over this process, officials have been evasive. They say some
people have been successful in using the site. They just won’t disclose how many. So much for the “
most transparent administration in history."

But what else is new? From the start, the incompetent Obama administration has coerced and
obfuscated to force this ill-conceived, budget-busting program into existence, despite the fact
that a majority of Americans disapprove (57 percent oppose the law, according to a Sept. 30 CNN/ORC
poll).

The website might be re-engineered in the coming weeks, but it is hardly surprising and entirely
fitting that the first product of the new program is an error message.